


We're All Golden Sunflowers Inside

by cecilkirk



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Kill Your Darlings (2013), Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, F/M, Homicide, M/M, Ryden, Stalking, Unrequited Love, beat poets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 08:21:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6649918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilkirk/pseuds/cecilkirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New York, 1944. Brendon is on the precipice of everything he's ever known. Ryan is too, in his own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness._

\--Allen Ginsberg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. prologue

_ Some things, once you’ve loved them, become yours forever. _

Tears stream down Ryan’s face. He cries silently. The little oceans from behind his eyes fall into the river like rain, like chaos embodied in ill-fitting peace.

_ And if you try to let them go… _

The water keeps Shane floating at his bare waist. He can feel the tears slide down his cheeks, his neck, his chest, dripping errantly. Some hit Shane’s shirt, but they don’t wash away the blood.

_...they only circle back and return to you. _

Ryan pulls his hands away from Shane’s body. He floats down the river a few inches before beginning to sink. It’s peaceful. It’s quiet. When Shane finally goes under, Ryan covers his face with his hands.

The stones and shoelaces had done the trick.

Most of the blood had been washed off in the river, but not all of it. He can smell it on his palms and between his fingers, too deep in his pores to get rid of permanently. 

_ They become part of who you are... _

His tears aren’t silent anymore. The moonlight won’t keep his shrieking secret, either. He suddenly feels exposed for the first time that night, becoming aware of his own nudity and the gravity of what he’s done. He’d ditched his clothes at the park to burn later and get rid of the blood-soaked evidence, but no explanation in the world will justify the gravest of his actions.

Not even the justification he has.

Suddenly, the night is too silent, the river too still. He is all alone. 

Something brushes against his feet and he has a violent flashback of Shane’s pain-twisted face and hopeless gasping. It’s interrupted by the crashing waves he leaves in his wake as he clumsily runs out of the waist-deep water, heading for the shore.

_...or they destroy you. _

 

 

 

Ryan reads the document with abhorrence and shock, knotting together tight enough to make him sick.

From the other side of the bars, Brendon stares at him, mirroring exactly what Ryan feels but for a different reason.

In frustration, Ryan crumples the papers as if by balling them up small enough, he can act like they don’t exist. 

Brendon is unphased. He stares, unrelenting now.

“You can’t--you can’t use this,” Ryan says.

“I can, and I will,” Brendon says. “If you won’t tell the truth, I won’t hesitate to.”

Ryan’s stomach drops. He pulls the papers closer to his body.

“You weren’t there. You don’t know what happened,” Ryan says. His voice is firmer this time. It has to be. He can’t afford for it to waver, not at this time.

Brendon tries to reach through the bars for his manuscript back, but Ryan steps away from him, further into his cell. He can see Brendon’s jaw clench.

“You hated him, too,” Ryan reminds him like it’s a viable explanation. “You wanted me to do it.”

Brendon’s stare is interminable, and Ryan can’t see what lays past his eyes anymore. Not like he used to. It’s a wall now, all determination and fury and strength. 

He’s not the same as he once was.

He’s not the Brendon Ryan knew.

In one swift motion, Brendon takes a step forward so he’s flush against the bars, plunges his arm inside, and snatches the papers from Ryan. It loosens the solid panic inside his chest. His voice finally gives way to weakness.

“Brendon,” he begs, voice pitching upward into a whine of desperation, “You can’t do this. You’ll kill me if you let them see it.”

Brendon’s eyes are unchanging. He’s unphased. He spares Ryan a glance--a once-over to pocket Ryan in his memories. It feels sour like pity in the pit of Ryan’s stomach.

Then, Brendon takes a step away.

“No,” Ryan says. Panic chokes his voice. He couldn’t be doing this, this couldn’t be real--

Another step. Another. Ryan has to press his face against the bars to keep his eye on Brendon as he peacefully walked away, toward the prison doors.

“Brendon!” he shrieks, and it tears his lungs apart, catching in his throat and mouth like shrapnel. “Brendon! No!”

His fingers snake around the bars in desperation. He feels tears burn in his throat and eyes. He knows they won’t be silent.

Shane was gone. Brendon was gone.

Truly, truly, he was all alone.

The prison alarm begins to sound. Guards stomp and sprint around the floor and Ryan is forced to watch from his cage. They don’t spare him a glance. They can’t hear him shrieking.

 

 


End file.
